Consumers have come to enjoy accessing media content on-demand on non-television devices, such as mobile phones or tablet computers, by streaming media content over the internet or downloading media content to the device. Consumers also enjoy watching television broadcasts, either in real time or through digital video recorders (DVRs) whereby broadcasts can be recorded and viewed at a later time.
However, it has only recently been common to merge the two media consumption models by allowing recorded content from one device to be streamed or downloaded to another device due to concerns about digital rights management. For instance, equipment such as cable boxes or DVRs have only recently allowed media content, either real time broadcasts or recorded content, to be streamed or downloaded to non-television devices. Although many consumers would enjoy the flexibility of being able to choose whether to watch a live or recorded television broadcast on a non-television device, such as if they are not at home but would still like to watch a particular program on their mobile phone while on the go, most cable boxes and DVRs encrypt their content or have other digital rights management schemes in place to prevent unauthorized copying or transfer of media content.
Some systems are under development that would allow copy-protected content from one device can be accessed with authorization on a secondary device, without allowing unrestricted copying of the media content. For example, Digital Transmission Content Protection over Internet Protocol (DTCP-IP) is a scheme that provides for copy protection of media content as it is moved from one device to another device over a data connection. In a DTCP-IP system, a consumer can record television content on a DVR, then stream that recorded content to a smartphone or other device over a wireless internet connection while maintaining the content's copy protection and preventing unauthorized copying.
A device or operating system can be compatible with DTCP-IP if it is secure enough to allow a client application to process media transport streams without allowing users, other applications, or other parts of the system to access clear decrypted media transport streams. By way of a non-limiting example, DTCP-IP can be implemented on Apple® devices that run the iOS® operating system, such as the iPhone® and iPad®, because they have a secure boot chain, allow signed code, natively have a secure HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) player with a root of trust, and allow linking of a secure Software Development Kit (SDK) with obfuscation and white box protection to the secure root of trust, the device certificate, and private key, such as a secure RSA identity.